The Dictionary of Human Geography (212 page)

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Authors: Michael Watts

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have begun to reflect on the postwar develop ment of urban geography, to which the numer ous special issues devoted to this in the journal Urban Geography over the past few years attest. Urban geographers have also begun to re engage more clearly with questions of urban policy, and to promote an urban geography that critically evaluates urban theory and methods and has a social change and/or justice agenda. This ?new? urban geography has prac tical relevance and resonance, and the material engages with, and works through, substantive political engagement. ll (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Allen, Massey and Pryke (1999); Bridge and Watson (2000); Fyfe and Kenny (2005); Hall (2000); Pacione (2001b, 2002). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
urban managers and gatekeepers
State bureaucrats (managers), such as officers in public housing and planning agencies, and private sector professionals (gatekeepers), such as estate agents (realtors), landlords and mort gage lenders, who control access to urban resources, particularly housing (cf. housing (NEW PARAGRAPH) cLass; housing studies). Their professional norms and, in some cases, personal bias con dition the access of certain social groups (often defined by race) to housing through decision making and allocation practices withholding or providing erroneous informa tion, differential pricing, selective advertising and redLining. The work of Pahl (1975) and others spurred much research, while recent work in the American context (Yinger, 1995) suggests that despite legal restrictions, non whites continue to face discrimination in the housing market. em (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Pahl (1975). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
urban nature
A combination of seemingly contradictory terms: conventionally, where there is the city, there cannot be nature. In the past, urban life was decidedly built in con tradistinction to rural and agricultural forms of life. Nature, like ?uncivilized? forms of life, was banned within the walls of cities. urbaniza tion, in fact, has often been understood as a process of human distancing from first nature (Lefebvre, 2003 [1970]). In cities, nature became a residual or artificial category limited to parks, zoos and urban mostly ornamental gardens. Still, twentieth century urban the ory was strongly influenced by the ways in which nature was understood by modern sci ence. The chicago schooL of urban sociology organized thinking on social structures and processes around notions taken from evolu tionary biology and ecoLogy (see human ecoLogy). These metaphors were so strongly criticized by human geographers and urban sociologists (Harvey, 1973; Castells, 1977; Gottdiener, 1985) that it became extraordin arily difficult to conceptualize ?urban? and ?nature? together. The impasse was broken in the 1990s, when scholars in poLiticaL ecoL ogy began to question the non urban focus of their field and its search for ?nature? outside of cities. Some urban political ecologists began to question the non urban focus of their field, which looked for nature outside of cities. The new field of urban ecoLogy studies the spe cific bio physical natures found in urban set tings (Breuste, Feldman and Uhlmann, 1998). Planners and designers have taken nature into consideration when altering urban form (Hough, 2004). Urban social geographers at the same time began to take a fresh look at urban nature. Signature studies of individual cities such as Chicago (Cronon, 1991), Los Angeles (Davis, 1998) and New York City (NEW PARAGRAPH) (Gandy, 2002) placed nature in a continuum of societal relationships rather than separate from it. sociaL justice concerns were widened to include issues of urban environmentaL justice (Harvey, 1996; Bullard, 2000). By the mid 1990s, the notion of ?zoopolis? was added to acknowledge the presence of animals inside cities (Emel and Wolch, 1998; see animaLs). Going even further, urban geog raphers have now begun to speak about ?trans human urbanism? to express the collapsing of boundaries between human and non human nature(s) in cities (Braun, 2005). Originally used in the context of studies on urban sus tainabiLity (Newcombe, Kalma and Aston, (NEW PARAGRAPH) , the concept of ?urban metabolism? has now become central to critical explor ations of urban nature (Heynen, Kaika and Swyngedouw, 2006). Urban political ecology in both the global south and the (post )indus trial north has begun to acknowledge the importance of thinking urban nature as part of, rather than different from, social and cul tural processes in cities. rk (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Desfor and Keil (2004); Kaika (2005); Keil (2003, 2006); Swyngedouw (2004). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
urban origins
Most archaeologists, geog raphers and historians recognize five distinct ive cuLturaL hearths in which cities first emerged: (NEW PARAGRAPH) Mesopotamia (modern Iraq) (3500 bce); (NEW PARAGRAPH) the Nile Valley (Egypt) (3000 bce); (NEW PARAGRAPH) the Indus Valley (modern India/Pakistan) (2300 bce); (NEW PARAGRAPH) the Huan He (Yellow River) Valley (China) (1500 bce); and (NEW PARAGRAPH) Meso America (600 bce). (NEW PARAGRAPH) The sites and locations differ, but so too did the process. In Mesopotamia urban trajector ies were long drawn out, for example, whereas in much of the Indus valley the transition to a distinctively ?urban phase? was much more rapid (Possehl, 1990). Gordon Childe (1946, 1950) claimed that the formation of cities was so dramatic that it constituted a veritable urban revolution, whereas Lewis Mumford (1963) insisted that early cities emerged through the concentration and condensation of cultural forms that pre existed their crystal lization and so preferred to speak of an urban implosion. (NEW PARAGRAPH) There has also been a lively debate over the importance of reLigion: Mumford insisted that it was ?only for their gods? that would have been mobilized on such a scale and for such extensive periods of time, and Paul Wheatley (1971, 1972) saw the city as not only a sacred space but also a cosmogram, ?the pivot of the four quarters? (see also Carl, Kemp, Laurence, Coningham, Higham and Cowgill, 2000). Others, reactivating Childe?s materiaLism, insisted on the importance of the production and concentration of a surplus within a supra local economy dominated by redistribution (Harvey, 1973). It may be, however, that the distinction between ?religion? and ?economy? owes more to our own language systems and analytical distinctions than to the world views of the people who made these extraordinary transitions. Focusing on the king as ?the dominant locus of spatial production in southern Mesopotamia by the Ur II period?, Smith (2003b) argues that the king was both the guarantor of the fertility of the land, and as such responsible for constructing many of the large irrigation canals required for agricultural production on the arid plains of Sumer (see Adams, 1966), and also guaran tor of the security of the city, and as such responsible for propitiating the gods through a monumental architecture of ziggurats and temples (see Gates, 2003). In short, the choice between ?gods? or ?granaries? may be a false one (see table). (NEW PARAGRAPH) Most urban geographers and historical geographers have seen the study of urban ori gins as little more than a platform from which to explore other, to them more pressing, issues about the nature of urbanism (Carter, 1977). But research into the origins of urbanism in the canonical sites and in others has been revitalized in recent years by new excavations, new techniques of remote sensing and recon struction, and new ideas (in particular a move beyond the ?new archaeology? of the 1970s, which was closely modelled on spatiaL sci ence, to a closer co operation with anthropol ogy and a correspondingly greater interest in economic, cultural and political processes). Three debates have been particularly (NEW PARAGRAPH) important in opening up the trajectories (NEW PARAGRAPH) through which cities first emerged in different (NEW PARAGRAPH) cultures around the world: (NEW PARAGRAPH) ?Decoupling? urbanization from agriculture. Trading on two major excavations at Catal Hoyuk in Anatolia by James Mellaart and Ian Hodder (see Hodder, 2006), and on a thought experiment by Jane Jacobs (1992 [1961]) in which Catal Hoyuk becomes ?New Obsidian? Edward Soja (2000b) proposed that ?Rather than an agri cultural surplus being necessary for the cre ation of cities, it was cities that were necessary for the creation of an agricultural surplus.? It is important to recognize that the relations between subsistence, surplus and city formation were many stranded, but the rise and fall of cities was often in timately connected to changing ecological regimes and it seems unlikely that such a global reversal can be sustained. (NEW PARAGRAPH) ?Decoupling? urbanization from state forma tion. The first cities were closely associated with the invention of writing systems, but these were usually inventories of stocks and flows of goods pivoting on the temple (ra ther than chronicles of kings) and so do not necessarily tie the formation of the city to the emergence of a centralized state (see Yoffee, 2005). In South Asia, for example, Smith (2006a, p. 109) shows that cities were tied in to larger economic systems and were ?long lived regardless of the political configuration in which they were located?. (NEW PARAGRAPH) ?Decoupling? urbanization from elites. Cities, then as now, were more than monumental performances of power. Many scholars do still accept that the first cities ?stressed the insignificance of the ordinary person, the power and legitimacy of the ruler, and the concentration of supernatural power? (Trigger, 2003, p. 121). But Smith (2006a) insists on ?the willing presence of a popula tion? as Mumford (1963) had it, the first cities were ?magnets? as well as ?containers? and Smith sees these cities as ?a focal point for social, economic and ritual NETwoRkS sustained and invested in by the hundreds and thousands of people who lived in them? so that the result was ?the product of nego tiation, compromise and consensus among many different individuals and groups.? dg (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Gates (2003, pp. 29 119); Smith (2003b); Yoffee (2005). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
urban renewal
A term referring to a range of strategies aimed at reshaping urban land scapes and remedying social and economic problems associated with run down inner city NElGHbOURHOODS. These strategies, gen erally promoted by state actors and business interests, are frequently questioned and/or dir ectly opposed by residents of central city neighbourhoods. Nevertheless, they generally result in massive landscape change and the displacement of large numbers of existing resi dents. Debate around urban renewal tends to focus on the interests that drive it, the specific strategies employed to achieve it, and the impacts of renewal strategies on targeted neighbourhoods and their residents. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Urban renewal has a long history, with ante cedents in the Haussmannization of Paris in the 1850s and 1860s, for instance. Yet, it generally refers to massive state led building projects in the wake of the Second World War in Europe and in North America. The first phase of postwar urban renewal, in the 1950s and 1960s, was characterized by massive public works projects that razed established neighbourhoods in favour of new commercial districts, housing projects and highways in the name of modernization (Berman, 1983). These projects were conceived and driven by powerful state bureaucracies and, in some cases, by powerful individuals such as New York?s Robert Moses. Bureaucrats wielded their power not merely to address self evident urban problems but to actually constitute specific neighbourhoods, and by extension, certain people and ways of life, as problems to be remedied. Narrow definitions of ?blight? were central to the identification of areas in need of renewal; a fact that highlights the often problematic combination of power, discourse and space in urban renewal (Weber, 2002). (NEW PARAGRAPH) Growing criticism of these strategies the negative impacts of which largely fell on the poor and racial minorities who were forcibly displaced led, by the 1970s, to a wider set of renewal policies. These new approaches responded to critiques, levelled by people such as Jane Jacobs (1992 [1961]), of the high handedness of planners and the deadened nature of the new spaces they produced. (NEW PARAGRAPH) In the next three decades, individual urban renewal projects have been marked by com binations of strategies, the relative weight of each being governed by the specific context in which each project is operationalized. Massive state led redevelopment projects continue in some contexts while, in others, the refurbish ment and preservation of older neighbourhoods, often with the involvement of neighbours in localized, participatory planning processes, has emerged as an important approach. These strategies have been accompanied by the emergence of pubLic private partnerships as a business oriented, often property led strategy, which still dominates a great deal of urban renewal and is exemplified by large scale urban developments across Europe (Moulaert, Rodriguez and Swyngedouw, 2003). (NEW PARAGRAPH) Contemporary studies emphasize the role that the arts, tourism, mega events (such as the Olympic Games) and genTrificaTion play in urban renewal and the uneven benefits that stem from these strategies. Others highlight alternatives to dominant public private approaches, involving various forms of com munity development from co operative own ership models for housing to alternative methods of investing in inner city communi ties all of which indicate the ongoing tension and struggle that accompanies attempts to define problem areas in cities or to formulate and implement equitable solutions to those problems. em (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Berman (1988); Moulaert, Rodriguez and Swyn gedouw (2003). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
urban social movement
Collective action based on grievances that originate or are phys ically manifest in urban areas, such as a lack of public services, in which the state is the primary target for activism. A debate in the 1980s focused on whether there were distinct ively urban sociaL movements, and whether these were necessarily progressive in their goals (Fincher, 1987). Castells (1983) argued that urban social movements were, more so than other social movements, oriented to grievances around coLLeCTive consumption, rather than around class. Yet other scholars pointed out that some urban social move ments address conflicts in the sphere of pro duction (Fincher, 1987). (NEW PARAGRAPH) A central theme of urban social movements is activism against or seeking a response from the state, which is held responsible for uneven provision of public services (Fincher, 1987). Castells (1983) identified urban social move ments with very different grievances, directed at or limited by their focus on the state. Claims relating to collective consumption were exemplified by activism in France over provision of housing (Castells, 1983). Other urban social movements incorporated claims such as those around identity politics. Activists in San Francisco, for example, sought legitimation and social rights requiring state action. Castells (1983, p. 171) found these latter movements to be limited in their membership and scope, because of their adoption of social categories (identities) that defined and divided groups according to state administrative frameworks. Nonetheless, urban social movements in general could achieve some success, which may have contributed to their institutionalization, and a decline of the movements themselves (Castells, 1983; Fincher, 1987). (NEW PARAGRAPH) More recent scholarship has tended to examine social movements as a whole, with urban social movements viewed simply as ter ritorial manifestations of broader identity, cLass and sociaL justice conflicts (McAdam, Tarrow and Tilly, 2001). Activists in third worLd cities continue to seek redress for inequalities in urban service delivery, illustrat ing the salience of concerns oriented to collect ive consumption (Mitlin and Satterthwaite, (NEW PARAGRAPH) . Many challenges to state service provision, however, are occurring on a multi national, multi scaLe level, as part of broader anti gLobaLization efforts. dgm (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Mitlin and Satterthwaite (2004); Pickvance (NEW PARAGRAPH) (2003). (NEW PARAGRAPH)

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